BLUE EYES, RED HAIR

Eyes of ice,
hair of flames –
yet I burn when you look at me,
I freeze when I touch you.

I want to be the last man to make you cry.
My arms can be a cradle.
I want to be the only man
to stay another night.

Eyes of ice,
hair of flames –
I stare into you and you crack;
I run my hands through all that cold fire.



FLOWER CHAIN

She put the flowers in a chain
But she never wore them
As a necklace or a crown. 
She kept the flower chain in a locked drawer
Below a book of Poe given by a dandelion,
Beside an engraved corkscrew given by a mangrove flower,
On top of a stack of poems written by this moon flower.


One flower rarely touched another
And when one accidentally did 
In her shut drawer
She just denied the existence of the other flower
As a whisper in the dark.

She put the flowers in a chain,
Never wearing them
As a necklace or a crown
But hiding them in a drawer
Away from the light. 
Removing them one at a time
To wear behind her ear
Solitarily
In the dark
Before the mirror,

Feeling at once sad and powerful,
Sexy and unfulfilled,
Needed but alone.

GOD IS JUST A MAGNET IN THE SKY

The wind came up along the rain
And whipped around the house
As I waited for something to happen
But nothing happened.
Just rain and wind
And music and laundry
And the alarm clock
That will remind me.

You were born in the memory of the poverty of earthquakes
And the wreckage of civil wars
While I was born into a little house on a dead end street
Where the trees were sick and yellow
But we could play roller hockey in the street without defense.
Along the way we found the same music
And we found the same empathy, then
When we met a seed was planted.
Neither of us went to the prom, both of us lived our lives
Riding the subway to the MidManhattan Library
And now here we are, as far apart
As the day you were bitten by a rat in your crib
While I learned about dinosaurs in Kindergarten class,
Where I met Michael Blair and Marc Gonzalez.

If only we had met while staring at the same painting
In an art gallery during your time in college
As I toiled unloading trucks and ordering sundries.
Maybe this would be different. 
Maybe our bodies would still be beside one another.
Maybe we would be hearing the same song
While I made the meatballs and you boiled the spaghetti
And added to the gravy.
Huh. Maybe.
But this is what is.

The wind dies down,
Drowned out by the sputter of the washing machine
And the music always playing
In this room that is otherwise silent but for my sighs
And my swears.
Now there is a violin and an accordion here
While your home is filled with anything or nothing at all.

You are just a little horse in a small stable,
Unaware of the magic you are capable.
And I am just a little horse in the wild,
Pretending to be a thoroughbred,
Kicking around this little hostel in the middle of nowhere.
Neither of us will ever run free
Or find one another again
And so be it.
Let it be so.

My brother used to tell me that God is just a magnet in the sky
And that makes as much sense as anything.
If my heart was a compass it would point to you
As True North
As I move toward there

But never arrive
In this life
Or likely any other.

We are both born in the mud of slaves
And slaves we remain
In this life.
May there be another lifetime where we are us
And free
With the sharp rocks still under our feet
As we refrain from complaint.

God is just a magnet in the sky.
I’ve yet to see a better argument why or why not.

PRETTY BLONDE LADY SITTING AT THE COUNTER IN THE DINER

I look up from where I am sitting
At the booth in the back
And you have already come in and sat down
At the counter unnoticed,
Sitting and staring and typing into your phone,
Your little pale feet in sandals and curled up a little
Under the stool.
I put my glasses on so I can watch you
Without you noticing me from my perfect angle
In the booth. 

I can hardly see your face but you look good everywhere else
With your shoulder length blonde hair, staring straight down
At your phone, occasionally typing but never looking up.
Stout body, about 30 lbs. overweight – but aren’t we all?
About my age and growing old – but aren’t we all?
You frown into your phone until the waitress comes.
I keep watching you. I can hardly see your face.

You give the waitress a smile as you order. A pained smile
Of politeness, that grin that is close to the baring of a predator’s teeth.

My food arrives and I watch you as I eat it.
You can’t see me or feel I am watching. I am insignificant.
I cannot hurt you and maybe I can help you but we’ll never know.
You won’t turn around and look at me and I would be afraid if you did.
Your food comes and you eat without joy, in a hurry,
Sucking the orange juice into your mouth through a straw.
Still you look down at your phone and frown and type.
Is your husband a bastard? Are your kids not coming home for Christmas?
Is your job asking you to work today?
Is your mother dying?
Maybe you just frown all day. Are you in misery?
Are you a carrier of misery? 
So many of us are both.

I watch you and sip my coffee,
Imagining your naked body under that ghastly Christmas sweater,
The soft gentle roll of fat on your belly you cannot remove
No matter how hard you try
And I would not hesitate to put my hands upon,
Standing behind you in the bathroom as you are topless
In just your panties, combing your hair in the mirror.

I finish my food, finish my coffee, refuse a refill.
I get up, leave the tip, walk right past you
And you do not notice me. Your mannerisms do not change.
I pay at the cashier and turn around to finally see your face
And you are still looking down, concentrating,
Done shoveling the food in without an ounce of pleasure.
I still can’t really see your face. I turn around, get to the door,
Walk out into the late morning sun,
Imagining you are beautiful but sad,
The way I imagine I am,
Will continue to be.


YOUR BOOK

I bought your book 
because of the picture of you
on the back cover.

I looked into your eyes.
I felt your body all along mine
as my heart flip-flopped in its cage.

I want to luxuriate in your presence 
while you write poems of taffeta 
and poems of steel.
Sewn by you,
forged by you.

What kind of dazzling words await me
between the pages
of your book?
How deeply will I fall?

Your book is sleeping now
on my bedside table.
I give it a nudge
and it opens to the first page
but I’m afraid to read it,

knowing that you cannot be
the you I am so certain you are.

I close the book.
I don’t want it ruined just yet.

Perhaps tomorrow my curiosity will overtake
my fear
and I can destroy it all then.

It flings from mouths to mouths
And from ears to ears,
Through the narrows of generations.
It is mumbled into minds,
In the corners of their four-angled fences.
As they rave and rant it every day:
'The readers are the leaders of tomorrow!'


Let us, for a while
Stretch their throats to confession,
To tell us, in exact,
When will the readers become the leaders?

Is it when the dazzling dreams
And blooms of bright visions,
Are wickedly drenched off,
Under the weeping faces of wrecked roofs,
Inside our cages of learning,
Will the readers ever become the leaders?

Is it when, with scratched skins, the brainiest kids
Are worn with pieces of ragged wears.
Ragged wears still soaked, with tears.
Tears craving new books and pencils,
As their farming fathers, too peasant to provide.
But the dullest Senator's children,
Adorned in the fittings of the finest suits,
Will the reader ever become the leaders?

Is it when the best-built laboratories,
Are open to the ones bred,
With silver-spoon in their mouths only,
While those decked with destitution,
Are to carry out their scientific experiments,
Under the shivering shades of trees,
Will the readers ever become the leaders?

Is it when the most intelligent heads,
On the race to conquer unemployment,
Are made to turn around a million miles,
In the burning rage of the sun rays,
And the brutal beatings of the rain falls,
Still all efforts in vain,
Will the readers ever become the leaders?

Is it when the Executive of vampire,
Shielded inside the hollow of Aso Rock,
To butcher the fleshes of unfulfilled hearts,
In order to serve the beefs of their delicacies,
And gulp the springs of striving bloods,
To make the wines of their thirst,
Will the readers ever become the leaders?

Let us, once more, ask them,
Why they have made the ladder to leadership,
As tough as a tiger's tail.
Is it when brightening visions blurred,
And dazzling dreams drowned.
Is it when aspiring hearts shredded,
And all hopes turned grave -- death,
Will the readers ever become the leaders?

SCAR OF RAINBOWS

The moon as displayed
by night wears a ribbon
around its chest
The stars fits into bikinis
Each time I hid and watch the
Sky through my windowpanes,
They dance in barley
Each time harmattan knocks
At the door, there is always
A stretch scar on my face
That shows that I belong
To the sky
Mama's broken portrait
Is fading upon me
Father's beautiful stare from
The broken frame catches
My mood into tears of dawn
The rainbow in the sky
Was made a lollipop to the sun
Each day I see the rainbow,
It reminds me of grave
As it fades in all its colours,
So be me someday on my bed

From the Circle of my Window

From the circle of my window, I gaze upon life
And I watch how it passes by;
At a point I stood dread to open my eyes
For the things I picture persist appalling to my sight….

Life is a misery and death is not a release
The young succumb but the old lingers;
While many perish in hunger
And groan in tears and pain
Yet some are filled with smiling faces
With enough to eat and squander;
Hard work never amount to good life
Fast runners don't always win the race
Many are filled with darkness and till..
they cease breath remain still.

The more I see, the more it aches
I heard screams echo in my head
But my own troubles held my legs
I wanted to close my window
No more to see my neighbours in anguish
But what difference would that make!!

OLAWE Opeyemi Emmanuel
University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria

Middle-Age Superpowers

Can read difficult books even in dim light. Can overeat at lunch and then again at dinner even after having a big breakfast. Can correctly use affect and effect, accept and except, there, their, and they’re. Can get laundry clean without separating whites and colors. Can hold back intestinal gas during job interview, usually. Can win footrace against four-year-old niece if given proper training and warm-up time. Can return mangled paper clip to moderately usable shape with only his bare hands and pliers. Can pass badly dressed teenagers on the sidewalk and withhold comment. Can understand that superpowers are overrated.



Words to Warm a Teacher's Heart

Do we get extra credit for showing up to class? You weren’t kidding about that exam thing? Syllabus? What syllabus? There’s a textbook? My paper is only a month late. I missed class—did we do anything important? You gave me a B—why do you hate me? My paper is about the dangers of seatbelts. I saw it on the internet, so it must be true. I missed ten weeks of class. Is there any way I can still get an A? How much will I get when I sell the textbook back? Do you get paid for this?


Lies his Fifth-Grade Teacher Tried to Make him Believe

Every day, most people on earth pass within twenty feet of a murderer. Human bodies contain three cents worth of minerals. The average fast food hamburger contains 1.7 ounces of bovine hair. While sleeping, human beings swallow or inhale an average of eight spiders during the course of a lifetime. The average bottle of ketchup contains 1.3 worms per cubic inch. Turkeys are far more intelligent than chickens. The Russians established a colony on Mars in 1963, then abandoned it due to lack of funding in 1967. Too much television causes eyeballs to explode. He would never amount to anything.


Everyday Ironies #3

The Mercedes has a vanity plate: AVG JOE. The beer truck is badly parked. After the long skid on the icy road, he has a pretty good idea what his last words will be. Home sick from work, she notices that every clock in the house tells a different time. The snow-covered street is named for a tropical fruit. From the prison by the freeway, a lone inmate near the double-fences waves hello. There is nothing good on television, every channel, for about three hours now. The guy at the bus stop is arguing with the telephone poll and losing.


Everyday Ironies #4

In the bank vault corner, somehow, there’s a scattering of autumn leaves. Fluttering in the breeze, her butterfly earrings. On the lake, autumn leaves float through the reflection of autumn leaves. Just beyond the deer crossing sign, there’s a bear. The neighbors’ bad-tempered cat is dog-eared. The only quiet moment of the day, being third in line for the drive-thru cheeseburger. In the middle of the argument, even his stomach growls. The “back in five minutes” note has been on his office door for about three hours now. Stuck in the breakdown lane, she finally started to understand her life.

Chocolate-Infused Dreams
Conversations with French-English writer Joanne Harris

There is a first moment for everything: The first kiss, the first film that moves to the core, the first song that changes the perspective on what music sounds like, and the first book that stands out from the whole library of hardcovers.

First time I discovered Joanne Harris was through a used copy of her novel Chocolat. I admit that I liked the film; not loved, liked. And was curious to see what the novel would read like after such an interesting film. And what I found when I read the first sentence, was way beyond my expectations. Something out of a vivid dream, a kaleidoscopic mesh of sounds, tastes, textures, and scents. Harris’s novels were not books to be read as part of a reading marathon for a virtual book club. They were immersive texts where feelings and scents coalesced to create a magical realism that didn’t include mythical creatures or breathtaking kingdoms. Her magic was dark and drenched in hot caramel, feminine and mystical. Her writing drew me in and I had to read “The Lollipop Shoes”, “Peaches for Monsieur le Curé”, and “The Strawberry Thief”, then ventured off to some of her darker stuff such as “Blueeyed Boy”. 

First things first: Joanne Harris is a French-English writer. She studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at Cambridge and was a teacher for 15 years. Her most famous novel Chocolat was turned into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. Her work infuses magical realism with religious themes, femininity and misogyny, motherhood, witchcraft, and food. Food, scents, sensual descriptions, and themes are central to Joanne Harris’s world. She weaves the narrative without a kaleidoscope of scents, tastes, textures, and emotions. Her novels are easy reads in terms of pace and narrative, but they are hard to get out of. Readers get lost sometimes in the delicious darkness of the text and are usually left with a bittersweet aftertaste when they have come to the last page of the tale. Like dark chocolate and pink champagne, Joanne Harris’s writing is both luxurious and dark, yin and yang, bright and cocooned.

I became infatuated with Harris, a woman so far away, living in what I envisioned as an orchard French heaven where the air smelled of vanilla and hot melting chocolate, and tasted like the finest wine one could ever drink. I read her “The Little Book of Chocolat” and was mesmerized by the potency of this confection in all its forms and combinations. I wanted to learn more about Harris. Was her creative process always that delectable? How did the woman who created “Chocolat” dive into dark territory and come up with “Blueeyed Boy”? What was there to expect more from her? I sought her and communicated with her via email, asking her about her craft and her experiences as a female writer who has a distinct voice and writing style. I wondered why she chose to become a writer in the first place, a question I like to ask often even though I struggle with the answer to it sometimes,

“Because it’s what I do best. Stories exist and thrive in many media, and writing happens to be mine. Words, correctly used, can be music, movement, and performance, as well as so many other things. Words are power.”

Since most of the novels that I loved by Joanne Harris centered around food or had food as -almost- the main protagonist, I had to ask her why she chose the culinary space as an integral part of her creative universe and whether she believed in certain foods as seductive or “sinful” as they are described in some of her novels such as the Vianne Rocher universe companions,

“The concept of food as something sinful comes from a very privileged and toxic place, and I don’t subscribe to it. But food has personal associations for all of us, and it’s something that everyone can share and understand. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they relate to food, how they celebrate, whether or not they cook, and how they remember the food of their childhood. As such, for a writer, food is a good way of exploring a character’s personality, relationships, past, and culture. “

I wondered if she weaved magic into her storytelling because she believed that the modern materialistic world needed a little magic to move forward or spice things up. Her answers, as simple as tactful as one wouldn’t expect from a writer whose worlds oozed with dreaminess and sensuality, surprised me,

“I don’t think of magic in that way. It’s not about making a story more exciting; it’s a way of seeing the world differently. Magic in my fiction is essentially about perception, deception, and transformation. It’s about how we see the world, other people, and ourselves, and how we go about changing those things – hopefully, for the better.”

In her novel "Peaches for Monsieur Le Cure" -the third from the Vianne Rocher universe- she had written about Islam; a community most individuals are cautious while writing about, so I asked her what drew her to that world and the idea of fasting in Ramadan, especially since she already played the theme of abstaining from food and drink in “Chocolat”,

“I’ve written about traditions of feasting and fasting under Catholicism – why not then under Islam? I live in a very cosmopolitan place, with a large and friendly community of Muslims, who helped me gain the confidence to tell the story I needed to tell as honestly as I could. I wanted to write about two communities in opposition to each other through ignorance and suspicion, how they have far more in common with each other than they initially think; and how the communities are brought together by compassion, friendship, and mutual respect.”

Since she always went back to Vianne Rocher and dug deeper into the story, I wondered what was about this universe that she as a writer couldn’t resist. It had always fascinated me how some characters had a firm grip on their creators and were hard to let go, and since Harris had played that game masterfully already, I needed to ask how and why she did it,

“I wrote Chocolat as the mother of a child of five, and that mother-daughter relationship lies at the very heart of the novel. The subsequent books have followed the lives of Vianne and her daughters, driven by my own experiences with my daughter. Though I am not Vianne, I do have this in common with her, which is why I feel connected to her in this way.”

I struggled with times when my gender stood in the way of being taken seriously as a writer and I asked Joanne if she faced a similar situation. Her answer was curt and fierce as would be expected from someone so opinionated and driven,

“There’s sexism in all areas of the publishing industry, of course; but the idea that women writers are to be taken less seriously than men is most often held by ignorant people who don’t know very much about literature...”

Even when asking her about the movie adaptation of “Chocolat”, Harris seemed distant, detached from the whole process. It amazed me because I would have been quite the opposite had one of my -ahem, future- novels gotten adapted into a film or a miniseries. Her sense of creativity enthralled me and deepened my respect for her,

“Fortunately, the author isn’t the one responsible for the making of a movie adaptation of their work. I watched the process from afar, with a couple of short visits to the movie set during the filming. It was lots of fun, and I got to know the cast and the director, but I would never expect a movie to perfectly embody a novel; they are such very different media that it would be unfair to make the comparison.”

I couldn’t talk to Joanne Harris without mentioning one of her scariest writings to date; Blueeyed Boy. It was a horrifying novel, a dark psychological tale of poisonous familial relationships and the dark recesses of the internet. It gave me nightmares. I wondered how she ventured into that dark place and asked about her inspiration especially since on her official website she wrote about the inspiration behind this particular novel in cryptic, fascinating prose,

“The role of a writer is to observe and reflect humanity. There’s plenty of darkness in the world to observe, and some of it should inevitably find its way into my stories. Monsters are not figures of fantasy: they walk among us every day. Through stories we learn to defeat them, and sometimes, to understand them too...”

Like all writers, I asked Harris whether she would like to see another of her writings as a film on the big screen or -more appropriately now- a Netflix/Amazon/Hulu miniseries,

“It would be an interesting experience, and I’d love to see it happen. I think most of my books are too complex to be filmic and are therefore better suited to being made into a series than a stand-alone movie. But those are not my decisions to make: I can only watch and hope.”

Since “online” according to Joanne Harris in one of her interviews is a “small community” as good as any French village or a Catholic school, I had to ask why she was fascinated with small communities in general,

“Small communities contain all the elements of potential drama, and their chemistry is so volatile that it often takes only one person to arrive or to leave to make a significant difference.”

As someone who found multiple taboo-breaking elements in Harris’s writings, I asked whether she viewed herself as a writer through that lens or if it was just my perception of her work,

“I don’t approach my work in that way: if I have challenged taboos or establishment ideas, it is because I am temperamentally drawn to asking difficult questions, as well as being temperamentally opposed to intolerance and prejudice.”

I am a firm believer in divine femininity. I read too much into the concept and usurp the wisdom of writers and researchers like Clarissa Pinkola Estes. That’s why I saw the three integral female protagonists in “Chocolat” - Anouk, Vianne, and Zozie, as different sides to women as seen in folklore or mythology. I asked Harris to comment,

“Folklore tends to favor archetypes, and yes, it’s possible to see my characters as such – the mother, the wise child, the temptress, the witch – but these archetypal elements exist alongside their very human, very singular characteristics. I want my characters to live and breathe, not simply serve a story. “

I had to ask a writer as mesmerizing as Harris to express her sources of inspiration. Even though in different cultures, inspiration is a foreign concept -ask Christopher Doyle about how Asian filmmakers work from a place of enigma rather than inspiration- to Harris, the concept resonated and she was generous enough to share with me hers,

“Inspiration comes from everywhere. Books, current affairs, art, music, theatre, overheard conversations, personal experience, and sometimes even dreams. I try not to set limits on how and where I find my ideas, but I know that to make art, you need to experience art, and to write about life, you need to live life to the full.

[On her most inspiring writers] I loved Ray Bradbury as a child: as an adult, I am still in awe of his energy; his love of language; his compassion.”